1940

After some angry husbands in Los Angeles, California complained their wives were gambling away the grocery money, two vice squad officers raided the Monday night birthday party of Ann Dicker, a 73-year-old great-grandmother, at which she and seven guests were playing poker. (The policemen had climbed up the drainpipe to stealthily reach her second-floor apartment.)

The surprise intrusion yielded a pot of $2.70, “as it was a five-cent limit affair.”

The ladies were arrested, taken to jail and fined $10 apiece. (It was Dicker’s third arrest and fine for illegal gambling.)

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“A disgusting travesty on justice,” the police commissioner said of the arrests (Reno Evening Gazette, Aug. 15, 1940).

The main street in Elko, Nevada, 1940

1934

After hiding somewhere in the building, a person robbed the Bank Club casino’s safe of $500 in silver change (about $9,000 today) between 4 and 6 p.m. on a Wednesday in early December.

This particular Bank Club — a common name for Nevada gambling houses — was located in the town of Elko. The money belonged to Phil Heidt, who ran the club’s gaming.

Photo: by Arthur Rothstein

1946

Two brothers — Edward P. and George Jones — freely controlled Chicago, Illinois’ policy* racket for 25 years, beginning in the 1920s.

As a result, the two raked in money, $10 to $30 million per year, in nickels and dimes, primarily from the Caucasians and African Americans living in slums, which turned the siblings into multimillionaires. In one year alone, income from their operation, that spanned from Ohio to Idaho, was an estimated $4.5 million ($45 million today)!

On a Monday in May 1946, Edward Jones’ chauffeur drove him and his wife and cashier, Frances Myles, to Myles’ home. When the limousine arrived there, two masked men carrying submachine guns appeared, hit and grabbed Jones and tried to capture Myles, but she broke free and ran into her house. The abductors forced Jones in their car and sped away. Jones’ chauffeur and wife followed and a few blocks away, alerted police who then pursued and fired two bullets at the criminals. The gunmen fired back, shattering the squad car’s front window, injuring an officer and, ultimately, getting away.

Days passed.

Some underworld members speculated the kidnappers would hold Jones until he relinquished control of his policy business in the Windy City, or if he refused, murder him. In agreement with that motive, police theorized former Al Capone minions had taken Jones.

Their other hypothesis was that ex-cons who’d done time in federal prison with Jones (he served a couple of years for income tax evasion) had snatched him for ransom money. (Jones had been kidnapped twice before but hadn’t reported the incidents to law enforcement officers.)

Five days later, Jones was released. He said he’d been blindfolded while held but had been treated well, hadn’t spoken to his captors and couldn’t identify them.

A rumor then spread that Jones’ mother and sister had paid $100,000 ($1.2 million today) to free him.

Case Turns Cold

Police, as part of their crime investigation, tried to round up and question the usual suspects, 100 of them including former Capone associates, but the big-time players had disappeared. They included:

• Matt Capone (Al’s brother)
• Ralph “Bottles” Capone (Al’s brother)
• Sam “Golf Bag” Hunt
• Murray “The Camel” Humphreys
• Edward “Red” Meehan
• Anthony “Tough Tony” Capezzio
• Tony “Joe Batters” Accardo

Nothing came of the detectives’ efforts.

After the kidnapping, Jones moved into a 12-room mansion in Mexico City, Mexico, from where he continued to oversee his multistate policy enterprise.

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*In policy, also called numbers, players bet on a number they predicted would appear in a specific source on a given day. Originally, operators obtained the winning numbers through lottery drawings but that evolved into using baseball scores, pari-mutuel totals, cattle receipts and other combinations of figures that routinely appeared in the newspaper. Because players could wager nickels and dimes, even those who couldn’t afford even part of a lottery ticket could participate. Therefore, the game became prevalent in poor U.S. neighborhoods.

Sources

Photo from Pond5: “”The Road From Coins” by dbrus

When Nevada legislators legalized gambling in 1931, they didn’t consider one significant caveat.

The omission came to light in January 1955 when an industrious Las Vegas casino patron was arrested for using Mexican 10 centavo coins in 25 cent slot machines — an act called slot slugging. Apparently, the coins fit perfectly.

The judge ruled the gambler hadn’t broken any law, dismissed the case and suggested lawmakers revise the statute.

They did. In February 1955, Nevada Governor Charles Russell signed into law AB70, which read in part: “It shall be unlawful to use anything but a coin minted by the U.S. government in a slot machine. Violators may be punished by up to six months in jail and/or a $500 fine.” It also forbade cheating casinos by using marked cards, loaded dice and other devices. Violation would be a misdemeanor.

That didn’t stop people from trying to get away with it, though. At least three more incidents occurred that same year. A 64-year-old Salt Lake City resident was caught and arrested in the rural town of Tonopah for feeding Mexican coins into a one-armed bandit. He’d had a roll of the currency hidden in his coat sleeve. In May, two Californians were arrested for the same infraction in another rural place, Smith Valley. In June, a 30-year-old woman from Texas also was busted in Reno.

An Unexpected Tender

Later in 1955, casino operators began finding specific wooden nickels in their slot machines, which displeased them.

They were pieces that merchants in Sparks (city adjacent to Reno) had handed out as part of the Chamber of Commerce’s celebration of the city’s 50th anniversary; 10,000 had been distributed. They were redeemable for five cents’ worth of merchandise or cash from the chamber.

Some people, though, were gambling with the promotional discs instead. Chamber officials apologized, noting there wasn’t much else they could do.

“The old adage which says, ‘Don’t take in any wooden nickels’ is being bandied all over town. The whole thing is pretty funny to everybody except the harried gambling club owners and to law enforcement agencies,” a United Press reporter noted (Nevada State Journal, Sept. 20, 1955).

Sources

1956

As revelers welcomed the new year at the Sands hotel-casino in Las Vegas, Nevada, management gave every guest (an estimated 18,000 of them) a brand new silver dollar. Additionally, they gifted each of the 700 women in the showroom a satin bag filled with 25 silver dollars. ‘

That’s a total giveaway of $35,500 (a $311,000 value today)!

Photo from freeimages.com

Nevada State Prison

1932-1967

Inmates strutted around the Nevada State Prison yard and jingled the brass coins or tokens, in their pockets, to boast their elevated status as winning gamblers of the pen.

Beginning in 1932, convicts ran an open casino on the grounds of this maximum security facility in Carson City.

The warden allowed and didn’t hide it, and the public knew.

Over the ensuing years, the men played craps, panguingue, blackjack, poker, tonk, gin rummy and perhaps non-card games like roulette (although one warden denied that) and bet on sports — all using tokens, $0.05, $0.10, $0.25, $0.50, $1 and $5, as currency.

They did so under supervision in the convicts’ recreation area dubbed the bullpen. The inmates didn’t tolerate cheating, which kept the operations honest. As mandated, winners contributed 10 percent of their receipts to the prison’s inmate welfare fund.

Many prisoners passed the time by gambling, which they said prevented tension and conflict among them. Also, it gave the dealers and winners income and prestige.

Though, as in any casino, a fair amount of losing occurred. “Most of them go broke,” said Art Bernard, the warden between 1951 and 1958 (Reno Evening Gazette, Feb. 26, 1957).

Breaking The Rules

Ironically, the prison casino lacked a gambling license, a state requirement of any such operation. It violated Nevada gaming law, too, by dealing with “persons of notorious or unsavory reputation or who have extensive police records,” noted columnist Frank Johnson (Nevada State Journal, Jan. 9, 1960). “On the plus side,” he added, “one can say not only all employees, but all patrons as well, have their fingerprints on file with the authorities. And the gaming IS conducted in a location that is ‘easy to police.’”

The fun, however, ended 35 years later, in 1967, when Warden Carl Hocker put a permanent kibosh on the casino and brass.

“I think gambling in prison is degrading, and it’s certainly not constructive,” he said (Nevada State Journal, May 7, 1967). “We’re trying to replace it with constructive, wholesome activities that will contribute to a decent, healthful frame of mind.”

Do you suppose the prisoners then took their gambling underground and switched the currency to something else?

Sources

1965

The U.S. suffered a shortage of coins in 1965. And that led to decreased business for Nevada’s largest industry — gambling. Usage of half-dollars, common in casinos then for table games and one-armed bandits, experienced the biggest hit.

That year, silver supply was scarce and its price high, at $1.29 per ounce. At $1.38, it would’ve become profitable to melt coins for their silver content, a situation the U.S. Treasury feared. Another concern was running out of the metal for currency. To counteract these problems, President Lyndon B. Johnson signed The Coinage Act, which reduced the 90 percent silver content of three national coins:

• New dimes and quarters were to contain 0 percent
• New half-dollars were to contain 40 percent
• Pennies, nickels and dollars would remain the same; production of dollars would cease

Consequently, people hoarded the coins. This, along with the growth in vending machines, collecting and economic activity, led to the shortage. Half-dollars were affected significantly, as often they were needed for juke boxes, newspaper stands, Laundromats, parking lot ticket machines, parking meters, payphones and bus fare. Additionally, many Americans desired to own the commemorative half-dollar showcasing President John F. Kennedy, minting of which had begun the prior year.

Desperate Measures

Nevada had to take action quickly to ensure gambling stayed as busy as possible. So the legislature approved a law allowing for use of Nevada Gaming Commission (NGC)-approved tokens in casinos. Then the Nevada Gaming Control Board (NGCB) drafted regulations and requested their passage “under emergency provisions for the immediate preservation of the good order and general welfare of the state and the gaming industry,” as noted in the Reno Evening Gazette (Aug. 18, 1965).

The NGC approved those rules, allowing casino patrons to use metal tokens in slot machines and plastic or paper chips of less than $1 value on gambling tables. The tokens, however, had to be:

• Approved first by the NGCB
• Clearly identified by the casino that issued them
• Colored differently than white metal
• Sold only upon request of patrons

Also, casinos couldn’t redeem tokens that weren’t their own unless a player received them from a payout on their property.

With those changes, stability soon returned to the Silver State’s gaming sector.

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